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Hexagram 52 and xin?

elias

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Hi, y'all. Sorry I haven't been around much. I fell into lurking quite a while back for reasons unclear...

Anyway, reading Ames & Hall's Dao De Jing: A Philosophical Translation and encountered this description of the character xin:

xin ... is primarily a dynamic system that is metynomically associated but in no way exhausted by, its dense center, the anatomical heart-and-mind. This being the case, it might well be argued that xin means primarily "thinking and feeling," and then derivatively and metaphorically, the organs with which these experiences are allied.

They go on a bit about xin and the "resolutely nondualistic worldview" etc with more post-modernist nomenclature than I usually have patience for.

Anyway... my question is about how this might relate to Hex 52 Mountain and the "thinking heart" that appears in some translations and commentaries. Is this an expression of xin as described, a parallel concept, or something wholly unrelated?

Thanks!
 

bradford

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xin does appear twice in 52, at 52.2 and 52.3.
Ames and Hall overcomplicate things a little for the time they are studying,
But xin does mean both heart and mind, and modern neuroscience is only now learning that thought and feeling are absolutely inseparable in cognition, seriously challenging the idea that computers will ever become sentient.
We shouldn't try to understand "mind" in any kind of Greek or Western sense though. It probably has more in common with the word's use in "do you mind?" or "mind your manners."
 

meng

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We shouldn't try to understand "mind" in any kind of Greek or Western sense though. It probably has more in common with the word's use in "do you mind?" or "mind your manners."

Wouldn't mindful bridge those meanings?
 

meng

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The mindful mountain, the steady mind. Seem almost complete contradictions without animation, such as the tree herders in Lord of the Rings.

In reality, it is very difficult to steady the mind, particularly if ones life is cluttered or spent in a chaotic environment, or their inner life is as confused. But line 3 warns against holding back what is natural, so steadiness is not to be confused with stubbornness, though they are both traits of 52.
 

meng

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Hi, y'all. Sorry I haven't been around much. I fell into lurking quite a while back for reasons unclear...

It's nice to hear from you again, Elias.

I'm about due for a good lurk here myself. Wondering if I should put the moderators to work by retiring my current name. Something nice about coming back as 0 newbie, even if I am an ole fart. Bit of 28.5 I suppose, or just trimming my beard.

When do we start celebrating the New Year? I've got a month's worth of beer in the fridge, and everyone's welcome, in case they happen to be crossing the Mohave Desert.
 

elias

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Thanks for your responses.

@ Brad -- Thanks! I should have looked deeper into your I Ching... I poked through your simplified readings, but didn't find xin. fwiw, I find your dao de jing to be a much more useful text than Ames & Hall, who seem to be far too taken with their own cleverness.

@ Meng -- thanks for the invite, but I'm on the wrong side of that desert. Plenty of beer here, though, starting with a nice Belgian ale...
 

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